


phantom ache

by arishiomaya



Series: here is how the story ends [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 04:53:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15526461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arishiomaya/pseuds/arishiomaya
Summary: A pair of blue eyes meets your gaze for a second. They are not the eyes you remember. They’re too dark, faded, jaded, stained by a near half-decade of turmoil.or, the naruto joins the akatsuki au





	phantom ache

“Yo!”

Time froze, in the way it always seemed to freeze at the very start of a revelation; wherein thoughts were ground to a halt, but the world kept spinning, leaves rustling, wind blowing, but somehow impossible to hear over the roaring in your ears.

(You’re not sure how it starts, but one moment you are out on a mission with your team and the next you can’t hear anything except your heartbeat in your ears, pounding a mile a second like a frantic rabbit or the wingbeats of a trapped hummingbird. Your body moves of its own accord, one foot sliding back, hands forward, dark eyes fading, swirling, mixing to red. In this single second stand-off, frame-freeze, no one seems to notice, too preoccupied with the two dark cloaked, red-cloud-stained, figures before you. A pair of blue eyes meets your gaze for a second. They are not the eyes you remember. They’re too dark, faded, jaded, stained by a near half-decade of turmoil.)

“Long time no see!”

Youthfulness has long since faded from the other’s tone; voice cracked and made heavy over the past few years he’s been gone. The memory of sunshine, of eagerness and hyperactivity, of the kid who wanted to be hokage, is quickly broken between one second and the next and suddenly—

(no longer trapped by memory and nostalgia, Sakura and Kakashi begin to move, hands flinging through seals; you surge forward, hands flying through the seals for chidori)

—you are facing a boy, a teen, a man who you don’t truly know anything about, with long blond hair and dark eyes that have faded from blue to yellow and he grins, a smile full of teeth that has only a fragment of the smile that once belonged to your teammate; this smile is too sharp, too knowing; this boy is not your old friend, enemy, rival, this boy is older, surer of himself. He knows how he will end (he knows how you will end); the future spliced between slanted canines and the phantom aches of memory.

(Your attack misses, he dodges. The masked man he is with sits back and watches until, a few minutes later, he makes a vague handsign. The blond boy laughs, sharp and wild like a feral cat.)

Naruto grabs the masked man’s hand and waves before vanishing into thin air.

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written a fanfic in over a year and i haven't written a naruto fic in years.


End file.
